Today, over 50% of the worlds people live in urban areas, and the number is expected to keep growing. Understanding factors that influence urban growth through analysis of urban form is critical to urban planning towards optimizing efficiency and maximizing function. Recent attention has been paid to the polycentric urban development, which can be defined as the process of multiple independent urban centers of balanced sizes to be integrated by various forces. It has been highlighted in recent literature and adopted by policymakers as part of spatial development strategies around the world because the purported economic, social, and environmental benefits. Given there is limited empirical evidence supporting those speculated benefits and the emerging polycentric urban development in China, this investigation assessed the relationship between polycentric urban development and all the three pillars of outcomes (i.e., economic, social and environmental benefits) in Chinese cities. The results show that polycentric urban development at intra-urban scale is associated with higher carbon emission and less labor productivity, but higher quantity and diversity of urban amenities. Polycentric urban form at inter-urban scale and monocentric urban form at intra-urban scale are correlated with higher labor productivity. Also, there is synergy effect between polycentric urban development at intra-urban and inter-urban scales.